My descent into the college lifestyle and social norm has altogether challenged my food choices. When I lived at home with my parents they were very into nutrition and dieting to go along with their weight lifting and exercising so I ate the same foods they did, fruit, vegetables and all that healthy food. When at home I ate multiple meals a day that were all nutritionally balanced and I very rarely ate out or stopped at a fast food restaurant to eat. I also very rarely ate beef. Now that I live on my own and am on a budget I have been eating fast food and beef regularly because I don’t have time to make a decent meal and getting the healthy food you need is kind of expensive on a college budget. Because of my work and school schedule I only eat two meals a day. It’s also hard to be away from home and constantly going out to eat with friends. I can definitely tell a difference in myself since living at home and then living on my own.
I eat a lot of beef now that I am on my own which is not helping anybody! When I lived at home I would eat mainly fish or chicken every night and now I am eating a lot of bread and beef. By eating so much beef I am contributing to the need for live stocks which have a large land usage, which causes deforestation, and am adding to the pollution created by the cattle and everything included in agriculture. Then there is the fact that I am contributing to an industry that can lead to obesity. It is usual for college students to be on a budget and have this kind of fast lifestyle but by eating so much beef and consuming fats we are creating unhealthy eating habits as well as an unhealthy environment.
2 thoughts on “Module 6”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Hi Ashlee!
My name is Dorish and I am a student at Penn State University Park studying aerospace engineering. As a college student, I completely get the social norm of eating less healthy and less meals a day. With so much to do in a day, it is so hard to take the time to get the nutrition we need and to go out and eat the meals we are supposed to every day. It is difficult to find healthy protein choices such as fish or chicken that are actually decent in the dining commons. However, I think that if we give effort to try and take the time to make ourselves healthier, we don’t have to fall into the social norm of either the freshman 15 or a health deprived college student. I’m happy you highlighted the problems with the need for live stock and deforestation. This is something often overlooked when challenging the idea of the demand for live stock.
Great post, here is a link to my blog if you’d like to learn about factory farms!
http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/03/04/factory-farming/
– Dorish
Hi Ashlee my name is Josh and your blog points at the same topic mine does. As a college student with fast food readily available at a good price downtown, its hard to eat healthy like we did at home. You can tell the difference in yourself and others after a semester of eating more fast food. The problem is, as you said, that fast food is so much cheaper than the alternatives. This was a very interesting blog post to read. Mine is at: http://sites.psu.edu/geog30/2016/03/03/social-norm-and-food-diagram/